Siyum Reflections

The Siyum Hashas was incredible last night. There were inspiring speeches by Rabbi Frand, Rav Salomon, and others. I want to wish a Mazal Tov to all the mesayemim.

There was some contoversy, however, with some wanting to boycott the siyum.

I am very much pro-daf yomi, even though I'm not currently doing it. It's partly the Cal Ripken Jr. aspect to it (doing something every day), but also the Mike Morgan aspect to it (Morgan was tied for playing for most teams [12]) - i.e., being exposed to all of shas.

I also have a couple questions on some things that were done at the siyum:

1. Why did the booklets not mention Hashem's name in Mincha and Arvit? If it's because the fact that many may throw away the booklets, it has full pages of shas in there - would that be OK to throw away anyways? Maybe, it's worse with Hashem's name? I don't know.
2. At the place that I went to, they said Shema Yisrael 1x, Baruch Shem 3x and Hashem Hu Ha'elokim 7x responsively after Arvit. How can you say Baruch Shem out loud if it's not Yom Kippur?